1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a storage control device and a data migration method for the storage control device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In government, government administration offices, local self-governing bodies, enterprises, and educational institutions, and so forth, for example, data are managed by using relatively large-scale storage systems to handle large quantities of data of a variety of types. Such storage systems are constituted by a storage control device such as a disk array device. The disk array device is constituted by providing a multiplicity of disk drives in the form of an array and provides a RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks)-based storage region, for example. At least one or more logical volumes (logical storage devices) are formed in physical storage regions provided by a disk drive group. The logical volumes are provided for programs that run on a host computer. The host computer (abbreviated as ‘host’ hereinbelow) is able to read and write data from and to the logical volumes by transmitting predetermined commands.
The amount of data to be managed is increasing on a daily basis in line with the advances of a computerized society. However, the value of data is not fixed and the evaluation of a lot of data drops as time elapses. A procedure for managing data in accordance with the value of data is known as ILM (Information Lifecycle Management), for example. Therefore, a data migration technology that changes the storage location of data in accordance with the value of the data has been proposed (Japanese Application Laid Open No. 2004-295457).
Meanwhile, a technology that automatically generates parameters that are used by tools for setting storage devices on the basis of storage device constitution information and policies that are established by the user has also been proposed (Japanese Application Laid Open No. 2003-303052).
In the conventional technology mentioned in Japanese Application Laid Open No. 2004-295457, when the re-arrangement of data has been determined, it is necessary to copy data constituting the migration target from the migration source to the migration destination after preparing a storage device for storing the data at the migration destination. Hence, although there is also variation depending on the total size of the data constituting the migration target, it takes a long time until the data migration is complete and user convenience is low.